Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Ali Almossawi: How To Win More Arguments | Human Behavior | E49

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

The key to winning more arguments is understanding what makes for a bad argument.  When arguing, we often let our emotions get in the way and say anything to help sway opposing perspectives towards ours. This leads to irrational thinking and flaws in our arguments. Learn to recognize these abuses of reason and gain the ability to poke holes in your opponent's arguments! This week on YAP, Hala chats with Ali Almossawi, the author of multiple books including An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments, Bad Choices and the Point of Pointless Work. Ali also has a flourishing corporate career and works in cybersecurity at Apple.  Tune in to learn how Ali manages a successful side hustle and full-time job, and gain insight on various bad arguments and the logical fallacies or errors in reasoning people make when arguing. Fivver: Get services like logo creation, whiteboard videos, animation and web development on Fivver: https://track.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=51570&brand=fiverrcpa⁣ Fivver Learn: Gain new skills like graphic design and video editing with Fivver Learn: https://track.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=51570&brand=fiverrlearn⁣ If you liked this episode, please write us a review!⁣ Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety⁣ Earn rewards for inviting your friends to YAP Society: bit.ly/sharethewealthyap⁣ Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting⁣ Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail]⁣ Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/⁣ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala⁣ Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

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Listen, learn, and profit. I'm your host, Halitaha, and today we're speaking with Ali al-Mossawi, the author of multiple books, including an illustrated book of bad arguments, bad choices, and the point of pointless work. Ali also has a corporate career and works in cybersecurity at Apple. Today we'll be picking Ali's brains on how he manages a successful side hustle and a full-time job. We'll go deep into his insight on bad arguments and the different logical fallacies or errors in

reasoning people make when arguing, and we'll get an introduction to computational thinking and how algorithms can help you think smarter. Hey, Ali, thanks for joining Young and Profiting Podcast. Hi, Helen. How's it going? Good. I'm so excited to have you on. We have so much to talk about.

Likewise. Before we get started, I would just like to introduce yourself to our listeners. You're the author of an illustrated book of Bad Arguments, which is a book on computation. thinking and the point of pointless work. Your books have been read by 3.25 million readers translated into 20 languages and have sold over a quarter of a million copies in print. But technically, this is your side hustle. You also work full-time at Apple. Is that correct? That is correct. Yeah. My first book came out in 2013. It was a book on logical thinking and mistakes people make. And then there was another one a few years later on computational thinking.

And then the last one was just kind of a part memoir. And it was a shortish book about just the experience, my experience in publishing. But yeah, as you say, it's all been kind of a side passion project. Very cool. Tell us more about your background and your career journey so far. Sure. So I got into programming probably in middle school. I remember coming across a phone book that someone had done in a language called Basic, which is no longer around.

And there wasn't much of a UI to it. It was all text-based in a terminal. And I saw that and I realized that, wow, that's something that I can do as well. I don't need to be in a lab. I don't need to have special equipment. I can just do it at home. We had a 286 PC, I believe, at the time. I did that for a while.

And then I quickly moved into programming languages that allowed me to build user interfaces. So they looked fancier with time. And then around the same time, I was also into reading magazines. So a lot of computer magazines, and I submitted one of the applications that I wrote at the time to one of those magazines, and it was featured. Then I was very excited about that. And I thought, wow, maybe I can do things that can compete with others in this space. And I remember around the same time, the Internet was kind of taking off, at least in my world. So I started kind of reading up on how to register a domain name and how does DNS work and how does do web hosts work and all these things that we might take for granted nowadays.

but I had to find out how to find out about them initially. And it was a really nice experience because there weren't many resources available online. There wasn't anyone around me who was doing any of that. So it kind of forced me to kind of really understand those concepts so that I could understand how those various moving parts work together to make this Internet thing work. So I did that for a while,

and Google Ads happened around the same time. So they were offering money to website owners in exchange for ad clicks. And I thought, well, I'll give this a go. I don't know if anyone is going to click on ads or not. I would never click on an ad. So who's going to click on an ad on a website? But I set that up, and I don't know, some things, I think their algorithm was much more generous than the older days.

So I got all this revenue all of a sudden. That made me realize that not only is this stuff fun, but also it can be a source of income. So it made me kind of ambivalent about wanting to go to college. And I never was in academia, even though I was good at school, I wasn't really into kind of picking a college or thinking about standardized tests and how to do well on them and all of that. I thought, I'll just go to college, get it over with, and then go back to doing this stuff. But I went to college and I realized in my first year that I was studying computer engineering. and computer engineering is part software, which I knew a lot about, and part hardware, which I didn't know anything about.

And I realized there and then that, you know, there is a ton of things I don't know anything about, and there's actually value when slowing down and actually reading about this stuff and seeing how it's applicable and how the world works and so on. So that is how I started falling in love with academia and school and realizing that there is value in this other world as well. I enjoyed the kind of the fast pace of industry, but I also kind of... came to appreciate the slower pace of academia, at least in that experience of mine. So how did you get into writing? What first motivated you to be a professional writer?

It was by accident. There was no plan for me to turn into a writer. And in fact, I was very careful about not using that term to describe myself because I thought I'm not a writer. The Bad Arguments Project was a website initially. It was the summer of 2013, I believe, or it might have been 2012, 2013, I think. I was just like Hugh. I was doing stuff on the side. Some of it would stick, some of it would not stick. And this just happened to be yet another project that I thought would be interesting. I had some notes from my high school and college days about mistakes people make during arguments. And I thought, wouldn't be interesting if I were to put this in a kind of a book format and add silly illustrations with animals in them. And just post it online and see

what happens. I did that, and within a few weeks, it got picked up by I-09 was the first blog, and then there were other websites and blogs that picked it up, and it just turned into a book by December of that year, so within a few months. Once it did turn into a book, again, I started reading more about the medium and about the industry, and I thought, wow, there is a whole new readership or audience in publishing that I, that is very different to the audience that I'm used to with the internet. So that got me interested in writing, and then my second book on computational thinking is an actual book, I would say, because I started with an idea, then I thought about how can we kind of, with an audience in mind, how can we put together

something that's compelling for that audience and novel at the same time? And that's how it happens. So one step at a time. Very cool. Very interesting. So I recently had a guest on the show. His name is Jonas Koffler, episode number 45. He was the author of Hustle alongside Neil Patel. And he suggests that when you work for another company or another person, you're essentially renting your dream and that you can't own and rent your dream at the same time. So like you just mentioned, you achieved a ton of success in publicity with the book of bad arguments. It essentially went viral and became a cult classic among your readers. Help me understand why at that point when that book became very successful and you started getting PR and all those things, why you didn't just take the leap. into becoming a full-fledged, full-time entrepreneur and author.

Yeah, I think many people would have done that. And it was an option on the table for me as well. But for me, what I realized also at the time was that I was enjoying doing this stuff because it was a passion project or it was a side thing. If it turned into my primary focus, I don't know if I would enjoy working on it as much. You know, if I'm a full-time writer and all of a sudden I pitch an idea to my agent or I publish something to the market that doesn't do well. All of a sudden I have to start thinking about what do I do now.

I need to kind of make up for this and so on. So it becomes potentially a source of stress. Now, on the flip side, if you are an entrepreneur, that's your fuel, right? That sense of constant stress and that feeling of constant risk is kind of what propels you to move forward. So it was a calculated risk for me at the time. It wasn't one that I wanted to take back then, but I can see myself taking it sometime in the near future potentially. So how do you manage, you know, doing these passion projects and having a very demanding full-time job at Apple? How do you manage these projects?

What I found is that there is always time in the day. You know, I might not have a full day to dedicate to a particular project, but there's always a few minutes here, a few minutes there, an hour here, an hour there where you can work on this kind of stuff. And for me, I was when I first started my current job, I was commuting, and that was about an hour each way. So that was an opportunity to work on side projects. Nowadays, I don't commute anymore, but I still have about half an hour to 45 minutes every morning before I have to go to the office. So I go to a cafe here in downtown, and I just work on, I have a Google Doc called Ideas, and it lists, I think at this point probably 20 or so ideas. Some of them are still interesting. You know, six months later, some of them I'm thinking, yeah, maybe not so much.

but I just, you know, if I'm not working on something right now, I just go through that list and just try to flesh out those ideas. And at some point, they'll be at a state where I can actually share them. So I would say just making time in one's day for that and being disciplined about it. Totally agree. For me, like I mentioned before we started this interview, I have this side hustle for a podcast and then I have a really demanding full-time job. And like you said, it's all about priorities and just scheduling time. So before work, I work on my podcast. After work, I work on my podcast. I don't watch TV. I don't do frivolous things because time is precious. And if you want to work on your passion projects and you have a full-time job, you've got to make sacrifices. So totally agree there. So let's talk about an illustrated book of bad arguments. How did you first get interested in the topic of critical thinking? It was always something that I was interested in. I don't know when it began precisely, but I remember as far back as at least middle school. I don't have much of a recollection before then, at least of myself. But I remember in middle school at the very least, I had a few friends. I never had many friends. But I had a few friends. One of the things we did is we always got together and we talked about things. Usually it was about philosophy, but it could have been about other things. And that was a great opportunity to realize what worked and what didn't work when it came to convince other people about what you felt passionately about.

And because we were all very different ideologically, it was like the perfect place to experiment with that. So we'd go to a cafe typically, and we'd just spend the whole night talking, and it was such a pleasant experience. And I would say around that time is when the idea for this book probably began. When I then went to college, of course college is also an ideal place to do that, because you go into this new place where, you know, at school,

maybe you knew everyone in your class, in your class, but you go to college, and all of a sudden, you have all these other people who are potential friends and colleagues. And you have all these societies and clubs that you can join. And there was a debating society on campus that I was involved in briefly. But again, just making those acquaintances and friendships and talking about people about different things was, again, an opportunity to kind of refine these notes that I had about what worked and what didn't work. And I quickly realized that anything that was emotional didn't. really work at a fundamental level. If you're giving a speech in front of an audience, it is

tremendously useful to be emotional and to use rhetoric to your advantage. But if you're in a smaller setting with two or three other people or a small circle of friends, you need to kind of move away from that. And so a lot of the things that you see in the book, the book is not an exhaustive list of logical fallacies, but the ones that you do see all come from that time in my life. And they all kind of summarize the things that I was noticing in myself and the things that I was trying to avoid while I was engaged in these conversations. That's interesting. And so when I was reading about your book doing research, I noticed that a lot of people would mention when talking about your book, like how it's so important to know about these logical fallacies nowadays and how due to the advent of the Internet and social media, this topic is more important than ever. So could you just shed some color into why the topic of critical thinking and knowing how to make valid arguments or at least illogical arguments is an important thing nowadays?

Well, for a number of reasons. One, on a personal level, it's important for us, no matter what discipline you're in or what industry you're in, I think we all have this common goal of wanting to do good and wanting to get to some truth, however we define that truth. And so, as I mentioned in the beginning of the book, there's a quote by Feynman where he says something to the effect of the easiest person to fool is yourself. So critical thinking helps us on a personal level know that the product that we're building is actually the best product. Or the feature that we have in a new release is actually the best feature. Or the way we're kind of asking for resources at work or asking for money from VCs or whatever it might be, it's actually backed by evidence. and it's the type of evidence that would appeal to the other person.

On a broader scale, it also has implications for our everyday lives. So we have an election coming up very soon. From now until then, this is an ideal time for anyone who follows the news or reads social media just to kind of pick up on how people try to convince others of their positions and kind of what mistakes they might make and why they make those mistakes. Sometimes it's made consciously because it has a desired effect. So I would say maybe that is the more important one, is the implications of bad thinking on society and our everyday lives. And if you are on the other side and your presidential candidate, for instance, and you want to convince people that your policies are the better policies or that you are the better person for that role, again, rhetoric only might get you so far.

It's also important to kind of make reasonable evidence-based arguments. And again, that's where critical thinking can help you appeal to the right people. Well, we're definitely going to get into some actionable tips when it comes to critical thinking and go over some of your bad arguments. But first, I want to just explain a bit more about the uniqueness of this book to my listeners. So it looks like a very fancy children's book, in my opinion. It covers a small set of common errors in reasoning, and you visualize them using memorable illustrations. I would say it's the perfect coffee table book. And all of your books have this similar look and feel.

So why do you make books that are illustrated and look like they could be for children but are actually for adults? That's a great way of putting it because that's exactly how I would describe the books. It's they are all books that look, I would say the first two at least. The third one is a slightly different category. But the first two are books that look like they're for a younger audience, but they're actually for adults as well. I think I like the head fake that that involves. So I like the fact that someone would pick it up and think that, oh, well, this is, this is. this might be good for my kid and then starts reading it and realizes, oh, well, maybe some

of this is applicable to me too. So just on a personal level that general trick appeals to me. And also on an aesthetic level, I like illustrations. I think artwork is a great way to convey meaning and to convey ideas. I just like communicating things not only through prose, but also through illustrations and humorous illustrations as well. Some of the, at least in the first book, there isn't a lot of humor. I try to be careful with how much humor I add into my books.

But I think with just the right amount of humor and just the right amount of lessons and a combination of prose and artwork, you can end up with something that's pretty compelling. Yeah. And I know that 65% of the population are visual learner. So I'm sure that was a great strategy that led to some of that success that you had with that book. That is a good point. Yeah. Visual learners are, I didn't know that was the number, but 65% sounds like it might be the case.

I remember when I was in college, I used to draw all the time. Like in my assignments, I always used to use analogies. I always used to explain my answers using small graphics. And I liked that because that was how I thought. And I like explaining things using those kind of mini graphics. Yeah. And speaking of how people learn, you wrote this book in a very unique sense that you specifically wrote it about bad arguments.

You didn't provide tips on writing good arguments at all in the book. It's just all about these bad arguments. Why did you decide to go about it that way? And how does learning bad arguments actually help us construct good arguments? Yeah, like I say, because it didn't start, like as a book ought to start. I mean, I didn't do much research. I didn't think about, you know, how, what would be the best way to frame this book? What if I did it this way?

What if I did it that way? There wasn't much of that. So I can't say that I really thought about the opposite approach. And if I had written a book about good arguments, you know, how that might have looked, but what I started with was just this list of notes that I had about things not to do. And I thought, well, that's, to your point, you know, I'm not giving tips about how you should be doing things, but at least I'm saying how you shouldn't be doing things. And that's good enough. I mean, being able to spot patterns of mistakes around you, it's a good starting point. And then from

there, you can start thinking about each one of those ideas. You know, for instance, if it is wrong, to generalize without evidence. So I know that's wrong. What is that, what are the implications of knowing that for how I talk about things. So the hope was, I think, to have people explore each of these themes on their own. So have a kind of a catalog of patterns that they should avoid, and then from then kind of explore things as, you know, however they wanted to. And I mentioned a list of books at the end of bad arguments and websites as well. So the hope was that people would read this book quickly, maybe, and then go to the back and then buy those books or check out those websites and learn about each one of these fallacies. Yeah. Let's talk about the crux of your book,

all these logical fallacies, which are an error in reasoning or a false assumption that might sound impressive, but proves absolutely nothing. Many times people use these logical fallacies unintentionally, but in other cases, people use them intentionally during debates or arguments to mislead others into thinking, acting, or behaving in a certain way. Salespeople, politicians, and con artists are the usual suspects when it comes to these logical fallacies. So knowing how to spot a logical fallacy and refute it can be an incredibly useful life tool. There's hundreds of logical fallacies, but your book just lists 19 of them. Would you go over your top three logical fallacies you think my listeners should be aware of? Right. So I would say the ad hominem

attacks are a big one. Ad hominem is a Latin word. That means attacking the person or attacking the man. And you see that a lot. It's always important to distinguish between the person who is saying whatever is being said and the thing that's being said. So a common tactic that you see in debate or that you see on whatever stage is an attack on individuals. You know, so-and-so said this, or so-and-so is this or that, or so-and-so comes from this city or that city or this state or that country.

And so that makes you wonder, well, what is the importance of who said it? And shouldn't I be thinking about what is actually being talked to? about and if it's politics, for instance, what are the policies that are causing all this friction and all this anger? So I would say that's a big one, and you see that all the time. And I think the example that I give in the book is something that I saw on a message board, again, back during those high school slash college days. And it was something that I would see in that forum as well, just on message boards, people talking about things as petty as, you know, tabs and spaces in the software world. You know, should you use tabs or should you use tabs

or should he use spaces, and then people get into these heated arguments, and sometimes they'd lose sight of the fact of what they're talking about, and they just kind of get into personal attacks on each other. So that would be a big one. Another one that comes to mind is actually something that I saw on the news a few weeks ago, which is sometimes called the no-true Scotsman fallacy. So it's redefining things on the fly when they don't work for you. So there was an interview, I think, with the president's son,

where he's asked, who's your favorite Democrat, and he says Mitt Romney. So what he was getting at there is that he's not a true. Mitt Romney is not a true Republican. And then that reminded me of 2016, where the same was being said about Bernie Sanders. He's not a true Democrat. He only canvases with Democrats at election time. So that sense of redefining what is a true whatever is also a tactic that I see often. And it happens when you don't know what the bounds of the,

category that you're talking about are. And so that allows you to kind of change the definition of that category on the fly in a way that works for you at the time. Let's see. Other ones appeal to ignorance came to mind only because I can I know exactly where that one came from. There was a guy. I think he turned into a meme at some point where he says everything is because of aliens.

He's got this like messy hair and you see it on Reddit all the time. So they ask him, you know, what's what's the cause of this? he says aliens. What's the cause of that? He says aliens. So this is an example of an appeal to ignorance. Just because we don't know what the cause of something is, we can't attribute it to something else. So I know there are several concepts and phrases when it comes to arguments that have Latin names like ad hominem, which you just mentioned, and ad populam. Why is that? Were arguments studied extensively in Roman times or something? At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even

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show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Well, there are two ways to answer that question. One is to say that yes, indeed, this is something that goes back thousands of years. And it's been around, you know, people have talked about this kind of thing for the longest time. So it's not anything recent by any measure. Now, on the flip side, it's also depressing that this has been around for so long and we still make those same mistakes over and over again. And this is something. And this is something that something that I have thought about. I don't remember if I thought about it before writing the book, but I've definitely thought about it since then. What really is kind of the point of talking,

I must have been in a kind of depressed state when I thought about, you know, what is the point of all this? But I think the general question is, can we actually make a difference? You know, if we publish books like this, or if we talk about critical thinking and if we come up with projects and so on about it, can we actually make a difference? So at my lowest point, I would have said, I don't think so. You know, it's been around for so long. Not much has changed. People continue to kind of use the same things for the same effects.

But on the flip side, I realized that, you know, even if you were to make a small dent in the way people think, that's good enough because that can lead to effects, hopefully that have, like we were saying earlier, implications for the broader community. If I can change how an individual thinks about the world and that individual goes on to become a prime minister or a president, then all of a sudden, I know I can share the credit

of the effect that person will have on all his constituents. So I think it's somewhere in between. You know, we have to realize that, you know, some things can never be eradicated 100%, but you can make small dens here and there to improve things, hopefully, in the long run. Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. So another common form of a fallacious argument

is the appeal to irrelevant authority. Could you share some examples of this and why it's ineffective? Correct. So I would say the other form of it is, appeal to authority categorically. So any kind of appeal to authority is suspect and you have to kind of question it. But I used a simpler form of it in the book, which is the appeal to irrelevant authority, again, because I was seeing examples of that. It's, for instance, if some, I think the

example I given the book is of a scientist who was asked about morality. I think I had Einstein in mind for that. So Einstein, they had some personal issues. So would you go to Einstein to ask about things that are not science related or would he be able to stand on a stage and talk about those things that are not science related so it's any kind of authority figure that is who is talking about something that they may not have enough evidence about or know enough about i think sometimes we conflate the two you know if someone has a memorable name or a recognizable face or name we tend to think that no matter what they say is as good as anything else they might say and that's not the case if it's something in their area of expertise, it's one thing. If it's something about something completely

different, it's a different thing. So those are areas where one has to be careful. But if I pick up a paper, for instance, that has 50 references, or if I go to the doctor, and the doctor tells me, well, I think you might have this or you might have that, I could if I want question that, and I could do my own research, and I could kind of go back to first principles, and I could go to medical school and do all, I could go to the extreme and kind of do everything I have to do, to corroborate what the doctor has told me. But I tend to believe the doctor because I think that she has or he has the right experience and the right knowledge to give me a diagnosis.

That's the correct one. So that's the nuance in that particular fallacy. Yeah. That seems like a really important one to understand so that you don't get like conned or persuaded by a politician or something that is basically just using his name or reputation to get ahead. Right. And I think that's the trouble that, you know, if someone's on TV or if someone's influential on Twitter and they post something, you sometimes have a tendency to forget to question, you know, is that thing, does that person know a lot about that thing or does they know less about that thing?

So kind of assigning probabilities to what people say based on what we know about them is, I think, important. Let's talk about another one. It's called the false dilemma. What is this method of reasoning and where have you seen it used? The false dilemmas, again, I don't know why this morning it's all politics, but it's what's top of mind. But again, you see it in politics a lot. It's splitting the world into two halves and saying this half is bad and therefore we're left with this half, which is what I'm all about. It's very effective, I have to say. Again, a lot of these fallacies are about framing. And if you can frame the world or model the world in a way that makes people convince that, oh, there are only these two,

options, then you can use that to great effect. So again, you see that in politics a lot, in the way some politicians talk about the world, but you can think of any other scenario where you might see that. I mean, you could see it in the corporate world, for instance. If a manager or a director or a CEO wants to make the case for something, they'll say, well, the world is one way, but we can make it this other way. And so therefore, we're going to fund this project or that project. But the reality is that, you know, that framing may not be in accordance with reality.

There might be other things in the world that are also options. But we just have, I think we have this tendency sometimes to forget to question, you know, the way things are framed and modeled. And just take it as read that the way they are framed is, in fact, how they are in reality. This brings to mind like a classical example of a cognitive bias by Tversky. He was the first one to mention that. So he runs an experiment where he has. asks two groups of people.

He says there's a disease that is going to kill 600 people and you have two options. You can either save 400 people for sure or with a two-thirds probability you can save 600 people. And then he goes to the second group and he says, you have two options as well. You can let 200 people die or you can let 600 people die with a one-thirds probability.

Now those options are exactly the same. Just the framing is different. And he found that people were more prone to go with the first probability versus the second one, again, just because of how the thing was modeled. So language and the way we talk about the world has a great impact on kind of how people engage with us and kind of what effect we have on them. That's very eye-opening. So let's talk about fear. I know fear can be very effective when it comes to arguments. It can be a very strong motivator for us to take action.

And you were talking about politics. So do you have an opinion on how Trump used fear effectively? He used it very effectively. And he's not the only one. If you look at Europe, for instance, and some of the parties there, you see that commonality. It's using, again, using fear to paint a picture about the future that may or may not exist. So again, there's no talk of nuance or probabilities. It's just talking only about consequences.

And I don't know enough about evolutionary biology. to know why fear affects us so much, but it does affect us to a great degree. And if someone can convince us that, you know, there is a future that is bleak, that is certain, I think those are the two factors that are used to great effect. It is likely that that person will be able to manipulate us. And that's why politicians do it, because a politician is in the business of getting the most votes. And I sometimes have to remind myself of that, you know, character, morality, policies, the good of the country, the good of the individual. the one thing, but the most important thing for a politician, especially for someone who's seeking the top job, is to get the most votes.

And if you can use something like fear to kind of mobilize all those people, then you're succeeding as a politician, but not maybe as a human being. So that's the trouble there. Yeah. So let's talk about the straw man form of a bad argument. To me, this is an especially interesting one and one that we see all the time. Could you give us some real-life examples of this and break it down? Yeah, a straw man is also a way of kind of a slight of hand that you might use in the midst of a conversation. So someone makes an argument for something and then you change that argument or change the way that it was phrased and then attack that caricature of an argument.

So it could be done maliciously or it could be done by accident. But either way, it confuses the audience because especially in debates where things are happening, very quickly. You might not pick up on straw men. It actually brings to mind an effective way of having debates where you ensure that the thing that you're attacking or the thing that you're teasing apart is actually the thing that was said is to repeat it. If someone were to mention a topic is for you to then say, well, what I understood from what you said is such and such. Is that the case? And if you get a yes, then you can move on to picking out the things that you disagree with. that is an effective way of making sure that you don't confuse yourself and you don't confuse your audience.

But when it's done maliciously, it's sometimes tough to pick up on because, like I said, it is a slide of hand. So yeah, someone might say, for instance, to give you a concrete example, this is my policy for health care for all. And these are all the nuances, and these are all the details, and this is how we're going to fund it, and this is where the money is going to come from, and this is how it's going to affect the economy and so on. And then the other person says, you just want to give everyone free stuff. You just want to give everyone free health care. We're going to go bankrupt. Taxes are going to go up.

So completely missing all the nuance and changing what was said to a great degree. But again, if you're in the audience and you're not careful about what tactics people might use on that stage, you might miss that. And you might think to yourself, well, that is a good point. You know, where is this money going to come from and so on? Yeah. It just goes to like the red thread and all of this is that you just need to kind of pay attention and think about what people are saying, who's saying it, and if they have the expertise to say what they're saying or the knowledge to say what they're saying and if what they're saying actually proves anything or is just a way to kind of trigger your emotions. Exactly. Yeah.

I mean, that's the whole point of the qualifier critical, right? Otherwise, it's just thinking. I mean, the reason it's critical is because you are exactly. examining and re-examining and being skeptical about everything that is said. And if you do it often enough, and if you, hopefully if you read the right books and if you listen to the right debates and lectures and so on, you know, you'll be in a state where you're equipped with all this knowledge to be able to do it quickly. Yeah.

And I think it's a critical skill. Definitely. So let's talk about emotion. From my understanding, you know, I've done a lot of podcasts on persuasion and negotiation. And, you know, emotion is a big way to convince others. So what would you say is the best way to use emotion in arguments? I would say so long as it's evidence-based, there's nothing wrong with using emotion. To your point, if you do want to persuade, there is a huge emotional component to a persuasion.

It's not only about the data. I could show you all the data there is for making a case for something. Let's say I want to pitch a product to you, or I want to pitch whatever other idea I think, I'm passionate about. I could show you the numbers. I could show you forecasts. I could show reports and so on. Go through the literature and say why it might work. But again, there's that emotional aspect to it that is probably going to tip the balance for you. And again, I would say fundamentally so long as the argument is evidence-based and it's clear what the evidence is, there is nothing wrong with adding emotion to it. An emotion can be using a color that I know

is going to appeal to you or using language that I know is going to appeal to you as my audience. or whatever else, you know, touches us in a rational way is effective. So I was talking about artwork before, for instance, for communicating ideas. You know, that's emotional because I have to think about what artwork to add to my books, whether it's in color or not, whether it's very humorous or somewhat humorous or not humorous. What kind of characters to go for? Will these characters work in all kinds of cultures and all kinds of societies or not? and so on. And also, like in the case of the bad arguments book, the type of paper, the background,

the font, serif, sans serif, all these have emotional implications. Even the end band, I was looking at the book this morning, the end band, the cover, the fact that it's matte, the fact that it's a wrap, there's no dust jacket, all of these are decisions that are driven purely by emotion. I mean, there is no rational reason to use one or the other, but I should say it's primarily the emotional component that drives these. But then when I buttress it with evidence and I say, well, I am going to go for this color or I am going to go for this material, maybe for these reasons. And I kind of think through those reasons.

I think those make for a good team. Yeah. And just to add, a tip I've learned in the past when it comes to emotion and arguing is to remember that when people are upset or angry, they really aren't receptive to new information. So you want to take time to validate what the other person says. just saying, you know, you understand how they feel and try to get them comfortable and happy, and then they'll be more likely to then listen to your counter argument and be more receptive to that. That's a great point. Yeah, it disarms them immediately. If someone is passionate about something and

they bring it up and you don't counter that with something that you know is going to inflame them, it's a very effective way to start the conversation. Yeah, either to kind of, like you said, use the right language, disarm them emotionally, acknowledge their point of view, acknowledge their position, do it in a very genuine and authentic way, and then kind of present what your position is. It's tremendously effective. Totally. So a couple questions on another book that you wrote. It's called Bad Choices, how algorithms can help you think smarter and live happier. So you wrote this book to kind of apply algorithms to everyday life and help people make better. decisions. So how do algorithms help us think smarter? The point of that book really was to look at the

literature for algorithms and data structures. So if you go to college and you study computer science, one of the classes that you'll take is data structures and algorithms. So I looked at that material and I thought, wow, there's a lot of connections between what is taught to first year computer science students and things that we do in everyday life. So for instance, one thing that I do is I, I wash my clothes at the washing machine, and then I put them in the dryer, and then I take them out, and then I have to sort my clothes. I realize that there is a connection between the way I sort my socks, for instance, or my other items of clothing, with these other concepts that we have come up with in computer science. So what I tried to do in that book was to highlight all of these connections, to say, well, these concepts in computer science have these potential analogies in everyday life.

and it was a lot of fun creating those connections and kind of thinking through them and realizing that a lot of the things that we do have actually, you know, have analogs in that abstract world as well. And I don't know enough about psychology or cognitive psychology to know which came first. You know, probably the everyday life patterns that we have came first and those influenced how we came up with those abstract concepts. But that was the whole goal of it is to just kind of show what those connections are. And the ultimate goal of the book really is for anyone to pick it up and to read it and then by the end to realize that, well, there are more efficient and less efficient ways of doing things in everyday life. And not only does that help me be a more efficient person, potentially, but also it helps me understand all these concepts that I think are interesting in computer science. Yeah. And it's an analogy-focused or analogy-first approach to teaching.

So we don't have much time left, but are there any actionable items from this bad choices book in terms of algorithmic thinking that you can give to my listeners? So any key concepts of something actionable that they can do in terms of algorithmic thinking? Well, the book is fundamentally about efficiency. And this might not be straight from the book, but what makes me efficient really is realizing that time is short. So I have to get going. If I have an idea, implement it right away, get moving on it, try it out, and so on.

But at the same time, realizing that there is plenty of time. So that's kind of the polar opposite. So if I do something that doesn't quite work out, that makes me less efficient, I can always go on and do something else. So living in between those polar opposites and kind of the friction that they create is, I think, a healthy way to kind of go about being productive in life. Very cool. So this kind of duct tails into my next question. We are the Young and Profiting Podcast. So what is your secret to profiting in life? I would say be genuine, be authentic.

Don't worry too much about fitting in. The stuff we've talked about so far is some of it is stuff that I hadn't planned for. I hadn't even thought what even happened when I was in school or when I was in college. And the only reason I could make it happen is because I didn't worry too much about fitting in or being part of whatever group or, you know, that there might be around me. So just, yeah, focus on doing things that you're passionate about, be genuine and authentic throughout it all, and realize that projects are stepping stones in a lot of cases. You know, if a particular project doesn't work out, maybe some form of it will work out in some other project in the future. That's great advice. And where can our listeners,

go to find more about you and everything that you do. I'm on Instagram. I also have a website, which is my last name.com, and my Instagram and Twitter and all the other links are on that website. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ali. This was a pleasure. Likewise.

Thank you, Hela. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave us a review or comment on your favorite platform. Follow you up on Instagram at Young and Profiting and check us out at younginprofiting.com. You can chat live with us every single day on Yap Society on Slack. Check out our show notes or young and profiting.com for the registration link. And if you're already active on Yap, share the wealth and invite your friends.

You can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search for my name, Hala Taha. Big thanks to the Yap team. As always, stay blessed and I'll catch you next time. This is Hala, signing off.